During the month of August, Go. Serve. Love is stoked to share stories from All Nations, a global training and sending agency.
All Nation’s vision is to see Jesus worshiped by all the peoples of the earth. Their mission? To make disciples and train leaders to ignite church planting movements among the neglected peoples of the earth.
photo credit IMB.org photo library
My husband and I sat with a friend who’d spent years in Japan as a businessman. (He helped me with Go. Serve. Love’s post, Unreached People Group Focus: Japanese.)
We spoke of the culture of conformity of the Japanese. And my friend related a proverb–loosely translated, “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down.”
During the month of August, Go. Serve. Love is stoked to share stories from All Nations, a global training and sending agency.
All Nation’s vision is to see Jesus worshiped by all the peoples of the earth. Their mission? To make disciples and train leaders to ignite church planting movements among the neglected peoples of the earth.
During the month of August, Go. Serve. Love is stoked to share stories from All Nations, a global training and sending agency.
All Nation’s vision is to see Jesus worshiped by all the peoples of the earth. Their mission? To make disciples and train leaders to ignite church planting movements among the neglected peoples of the earth.
My family wrangled our carry-ons into that taupe-colored hum of a 757, bound for six months stateside. (After the lunacy of the week before, preparing to abscond for six entire months, I was just grateful to make it to the plane.)
I felt conflicted.
There was of course the sizeable slab of me that couldn’t wait to throw my arms around my parents, watch my kids grab the hands of with my nieces and nephews again. I was geared up to sit around a table with the people I’ve loved for a lifetime, just like that. Perhaps I would carry a dish of corn on the cob, say, to laugh at my sister’s jokes in crazy-easy normalcy. I hoped to devour a slightly unhealthy amount of blueberries and bing cherries in those months; to close my eyes over the quiet purr of a road devoid of potholes; to throw a few dishes in the dishwasher just because I could.
I’d say–and most sites agree–as soon as possible. Your goal is well-adjusted kids who have ownership in your decision, and who can eventually follow God courageously in their own life decisions.
If your kids keep secrets as well as mine did didn’t, I know it can be hard to discern (“What if they tell people in Sunday School and our cover is blown? We’re not ready to tell the whole church”). But even before you tell-them-tell-them, you can start planting seeds in your kids’ heads.
We heart this new, ongoing series–a virtual trip to the coffee shop with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)
Today, we’re grabbing a chai with Engineering Ministries International (EMI). You’ve seen them in posts like these:
It must have been around the time we left for Africa. I can’t tell you exactly.
In the midst of weighing (over and over and over) plastic bins and duffels, hauling kids for immunizations, and making decisions on an African rental, sight unseen–a phrase from my mom sticks in my mind.
She referred to my sister: Just remember that even though you’re losing a lot, you’re going toward something.
